Last year, when Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan were about to form a new political party, the duo had, in one of their frequent press conferences, distributed a set of papers that had collated a number of letters, emails and contract papers between an American Attorney C. Edmonds Allen and a known operative in defence circles–Abhishek Verma.
The spat between the two had resulted in several set of papers becoming public. There was no way of authenticating those papers and contracts. So despite possessing those papers, one was wary of depending on them for any news item. Today I dug out those papers from the bottom of the pile on my desk.
On Pages 114-117 of the document found an interesting detail. Photocopies of those four pages are placed in this blog entry.
You would wonder why:
Tonight a very popular news programme went berserk with its “new,” “exclusive” and “explosive” investigative details that “unmasked” the sinister designs of Abhishek Verma and the deep inroads he had apparently made in the heart of Indian defence and political establishment in order to secure defence contracts for his foreign clients.
There was and is no way to confirm if the programmes mentioned in these pages were attended by the people that they list out. Even assuming that they attended these receptions and cocktails, the people purveying this news have been economical with the truth at best and downright untruthful at worst.
For this media outlet to say it has investigated and found these explosive details is… err… stretching the reality too far. I am wondering if the news outlet’s reporters and its head honchos also investigated a certain MP mentioned in this agenda paper!
The nation may want answers every night, but the answers must come through genuine leg work of journalists and not depend on handouts distributed by others, leave alone by a fledgling political party.
See, read and judge for yourself.